As they sat at the table sipping the coffee, Bailey reflected on how exposed she was, sitting here with her mother.

One of the strange things she’d found working undercover was that the more enmeshed you became in your cover identity, the more vulnerable you felt in your real life, because there was considerably more danger of compromising your identity if seen with people who were quite obviously not part of your cover. It was one of the main reasons Bailey refrained from meeting up with friends from her normal life when she was operating in an undercover role. It increased the risk of exposure, particularly in social settings like bars and pubs where you never knew if you might accidentally bump into someone who happened to be acquainted somehow with the criminals you were currently infiltrating; and that could be downright dangerous.

She wasn’t expecting to encounter any of the Molloys here in this hospice, but they were a large organisation, so she couldn’t completely rule out the possibility of meeting someone who knew them in some way. Even so, with her father in this critical phase of health, she couldn’t allow herself not to visit. As for having an explanation to hand if she suddenly were to encounter one of them, she couldn’t very well imagine rehearsing it with her mother, so she figured the best bet was to keep her head down and her eyes open and hope for the best.

Her mother gave Bailey a faint look of consternation mixed with sadness.

‘Am I ever going to see any grandchildren, Bailey?’

Bailey got the impression her father’s worsening condition had only served to exacerbate her mother’s perennial pestering on this topic.

‘I already told you, Mum, I’m not interested in having kids.’

‘It just seems a shame, Bailey. You’re of an age.’

‘You’re starting to sound like Mark.’

‘He was such a nice young man. I can’t understand for the life of me why you threw it all away.’

‘I just didn’t feel it was right,’ said Bailey, not wanting to get drawn into a big debate about it.

‘Is there no one else?’

She considered mentioning Dale, but she didn’t because if she did, then her mother would be constantly ‘Dale this’ and ‘Dale that’, and, anyhow, Bailey wasn’t sure that it was even going anywhere with him. So saying, he had asked her if she wanted to go out for a meal the day after tomorrow…

‘No, there’s no one serious at the moment,’ said Bailey.

‘Perhaps you should make more of an effort with the way you dress,’ said her mother, looking critically at Bailey’s Hugo Boss jacket. ‘You look like some kind of… gangster.’

Bailey sighed, resisting the temptation to explain the reasons behind her appearance. When she was out and about like this, it seemed a safer bet to dress in character just in case she did randomly run into one of the Molloys, and if her mother thought she resembled a villain then at least Bailey was managing to pull that much off.